Logic Drummer Questions

[RickBourassa]

Does anyone here regularly use the Logic Drummer and have success with forwards?

If so, are there any secrets you are willing to share on how to get them to sound more real?

Do people have better luck with the third party drummers?

[cassmcentee]

Hey Rick, there are many succesful writers who use logic, though I don't...
Walk us through your process
I use EZ2 and Superior
Cass

[gitanosoy]

Does anyone here regularly use the Logic Drummer and have success with forwards?

If so, are there any secrets you are willing to share on how to get them to sound more real?

Do people have better luck with the third party drummers?

Hi Rick,
I am no expert in how drums should sound nor have I ever mic drums in my life but yes I use Logic (10.6.1) drummer on certain tracks and have had forwards/signed compositions, as far as secrets, I don't have much as they sound very real or really close as it has been tested with many engineers who had a hard time distinguishing the difference, if you are listening to it through your reference monitors they might not sound their best but in the final mix/mastered track through your regular listening speakers they sure do, at least to me. The one thing I might do is play around with the EQ and add the Logic compression to give it a bit more kick to it, sometimes.

I am sure others will post as I know really successful members that have hundreds of placements using Logic drummer.

Good luck

[RickBourassa]

Hey Rick, there are many succesful writers who use logic, though I don't...
Walk us through your process
I use EZ2 and Superior
Cass

Most of the time, my process would be as follows, starting with an empty Logic session.

-Add Software Drummer Track
-Pick Kyle or Logan, they are my go-to virtual drummers
-Pick Beat Preset that feels right
-Adjust Simple-Complex setting until it feels right
-Adjust Swing Factor until it feels right
-Add remaining measures
-Change middle 8 or middle 16 to different preset setting, half time or double time
-Track Other instruments
-Convert to midi and adjust fills,
-Use Midi Transform humanize function
-Edit Midi, increase velocity of accent beats, add or remove notes that don't feel right
-Convert drummer track to Producer Kit to separate tracks for each drum part
-Mix and Eq drums to taste so that kick and snare pop, send room mic to reverb bus

Is there an easier way?

Rick

[cassmcentee]

Rick, again, I can't speak for logic...
But... with EZ and Superior I find the rythmn pattern to start with and drop that midi map into my project
I have seperate channels for Kick/Snare/Etc (generaly 8 channels, I start my projects from templates where the VST sends to the channels, takes too long to set up each time otherwise)
still apply EQ and Reverb per each channel to match the genre
Make sure the Bass and Kick are playing together, complimenting each other
Make necessary midi edits... adding crashes/accents/rythmn changes
Compressor where needed
Mix till the drums fit within the tune

Hope that helps
Cass

[Ted]

-Pick Kyle

Man, I am so sick of KYYYYYYYYYYYYYYLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Haha. He's always my default drummer too. I like him and have gotten plenty of use out of him, but this is what I mean when I scream about Apple not adding more rock drummers. Oh... maybe I'll drag out Anders when I'm feeling super aggro. Or Logan when I feel like stoner hipster. The Britpop guy is good too, Ian or whatever... but it always comes back to Kyle.

It's like they keep adding drummers for Indie Disco and stuff like that, which is great, but come on... give us more rock drummers and/or give Kyle some new beats.

Some jazz drummers would be nice too, now that I think of it.

[RickBourassa]

Rick, again, I can't speak for logic...
But... with EZ and Superior I find the rythmn pattern to start with and drop that midi map into my project
I have seperate channels for Kick/Snare/Etc (generaly 8 channels, I start my projects from templates where the VST sends to the channels, takes too long to set up each time otherwise)
still apply EQ and Reverb per each channel to match the genre
Make sure the Bass and Kick are playing together, complimenting each other
Make necessary midi edits... adding crashes/accents/rythmn changes
Compressor where needed
Mix till the drums fit within the tune

Hope that helps
Cass

Thanks Cass. It doesn’t look like EZ or Superior would make the process faster, just offer new sounds.

[RickBourassa]

-Pick Kyle

Man, I am so sick of KYYYYYYYYYYYYYYLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Haha. He's always my default drummer too. I like him and have gotten plenty of use out of him, but this is what I mean when I scream about Apple not adding more rock drummers. Oh... maybe I'll drag out Anders when I'm feeling super aggro. Or Logan when I feel like stoner hipster. The Britpop guy is good too, Ian or whatever... but it always comes back to Kyle.

It's like they keep adding drummers for Indie Disco and stuff like that, which is great, but come on... give us more rock drummers and/or give Kyle some new beats.

Some jazz drummers would be nice too, now that I think of it.

Hi Ted, sitting here on my iPad. I laughed out loud. My wife looked at me funny, I started to explain, then gave up because only a Logic producer would find it funny.

I like Logan, not sure what that says about me.

[Ted]

-Pick Kyle

Man, I am so sick of KYYYYYYYYYYYYYYLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Haha. He's always my default drummer too. I like him and have gotten plenty of use out of him, but this is what I mean when I scream about Apple not adding more rock drummers. Oh... maybe I'll drag out Anders when I'm feeling super aggro. Or Logan when I feel like stoner hipster. The Britpop guy is good too, Ian or whatever... but it always comes back to Kyle.

It's like they keep adding drummers for Indie Disco and stuff like that, which is great, but come on... give us more rock drummers and/or give Kyle some new beats.

Some jazz drummers would be nice too, now that I think of it.

Hi Ted, sitting here on my iPad. I laughed out loud. My wife looked at me funny, I started to explain, then gave up because only a Logic producer would find it funny.

I like Logan, not sure what that says about me.

Haha. Yeah the Kyle thing is only something Logic users can appreciate .

Are you seeking more realism in the way the listener might perceive the drums to be an actual performed/recorded drumkit? Or is more of an overall compelling presence of your drums in the mix?

I'm sort of embarrassed to say that I didn't even know what New York style Parallel Compression was until fairly recently-- I thought it was the same thing as Serial Compression. So learning how to use parallel compression in my drum bus helped the presence of my drums a lot since I started doing it. I picked up a couple of plugins from Baby Audio-- I Heart NY and Parallel Aggressor. You use them as inserts in your channel strip. I was somewhat underwhelmed by them in practice, so instead of using them as inserts, I would copy a drum region-- or a portion such as kick/snare to a new channel strip and use the plugin on that, and I like the results better. You don't need something like these, but they are nice to have and useful. I assume you are using Parallel Compression on your drums, but if not-- look into it and it will be an immediate improvement.

As far as realism goes, I don't find the drums in Logic to be unrealistic sounding in any way-- but the Producer kits do give you a lot more opportunities to swap out pieces of your kits for pieces that sound better for the task at hand.

I sometimes like doing this: Getting a great Logic Drummer performance that I like and then taking the MIDI files and putting the regions on a new track where I have set up a third party software instrument drummer-- like IK's Sampletank Neil Peart Drumkit for example. Sometimes you have to check to make sure that everything lines up-- that your corresponding pieces of kit are triggered by the same MIDI notes--and often I'll have to drag a whole line of notes up or down, which isn't hard once you learn the shortcuts. You probably already know this, but it's a great way to take Logic's Drummer and use it for performances while using the sounds of 3rd party libraries. Best of both worlds.

I also recently picked up Butch Vig Drums by Native Instruments and they are super cool. I haven't quite figured out how I would use them in a workflow-- because they're very different than what I use, but they're really massive and dirty sounding-- and fun to play around on.

One thing that I am considering is getting IK's MODO Drum. I watched some demos of it and it looks and sounds amazing to me. And it's modeled rather than sampled so it loads fast and takes up far less HD space. The options are infinite. I figure if I get it, it could be really nice to use as a sound source in conjunction with Logic Drummer's performance ability. If you haven't seen it, here's a really nice review video from one of my favorite Youtubers. This guy makes the best vids across a wide range of topics--and his voice reminds me of the Geico gecko. I've probably shared a link before but it's a great product walkthrough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPWcn8rzEUw

[RickBourassa]

Man, I am so sick of KYYYYYYYYYYYYYYLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Haha. He's always my default drummer too. I like him and have gotten plenty of use out of him, but this is what I mean when I scream about Apple not adding more rock drummers. Oh... maybe I'll drag out Anders when I'm feeling super aggro. Or Logan when I feel like stoner hipster. The Britpop guy is good too, Ian or whatever... but it always comes back to Kyle.

It's like they keep adding drummers for Indie Disco and stuff like that, which is great, but come on... give us more rock drummers and/or give Kyle some new beats.

Some jazz drummers would be nice too, now that I think of it.

Hi Ted, sitting here on my iPad. I laughed out loud. My wife looked at me funny, I started to explain, then gave up because only a Logic producer would find it funny.

I like Logan, not sure what that says about me.

Haha. Yeah the Kyle thing is only something Logic users can appreciate .

Are you seeking more realism in the way the listener might perceive the drums to be an actual performed/recorded drumkit? Or is more of an overall compelling presence of your drums in the mix?

I'm sort of embarrassed to say that I didn't even know what New York style Parallel Compression was until fairly recently-- I thought it was the same thing as Serial Compression. So learning how to use parallel compression in my drum bus helped the presence of my drums a lot since I started doing it. I picked up a couple of plugins from Baby Audio-- I Heart NY and Parallel Aggressor. You use them as inserts in your channel strip. I was somewhat underwhelmed by them in practice, so instead of using them as inserts, I would copy a drum region-- or a portion such as kick/snare to a new channel strip and use the plugin on that, and I like the results better. You don't need something like these, but they are nice to have and useful. I assume you are using Parallel Compression on your drums, but if not-- look into it and it will be an immediate improvement.

As far as realism goes, I don't find the drums in Logic to be unrealistic sounding in any way-- but the Producer kits do give you a lot more opportunities to swap out pieces of your kits for pieces that sound better for the task at hand.

I sometimes like doing this: Getting a great Logic Drummer performance that I like and then taking the MIDI files and putting the regions on a new track where I have set up a third party software instrument drummer-- like IK's Sampletank Neil Peart Drumkit for example. Sometimes you have to check to make sure that everything lines up-- that your corresponding pieces of kit are triggered by the same MIDI notes--and often I'll have to drag a whole line of notes up or down, which isn't hard once you learn the shortcuts. You probably already know this, but it's a great way to take Logic's Drummer and use it for performances while using the sounds of 3rd party libraries. Best of both worlds.

I also recently picked up Butch Vig Drums by Native Instruments and they are super cool. I haven't quite figured out how I would use them in a workflow-- because they're very different than what I use, but they're really massive and dirty sounding-- and fun to play around on.

One thing that I am considering is getting IK's MODO Drum. I watched some demos of it and it looks and sounds amazing to me. And it's modeled rather than sampled so it loads fast and takes up far less HD space. The options are infinite. I figure if I get it, it could be really nice to use as a sound source in conjunction with Logic Drummer's performance ability. If you haven't seen it, here's a really nice review video from one of my favorite Youtubers. This guy makes the best vids across a wide range of topics--and his voice reminds me of the Geico gecko. I've probably shared a link before but it's a great product walkthrough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPWcn8rzEUw

Thanks Ted. Some great tips there. I have read about parallel compression, but haven’t tried to make use of it. I think Logic’s built in compressor is awesome. I will try it with that.